Rwanda Bees Being Wiped Out By Pesticides
Joseph Ruzigana, of Muhanga district in southern Rwanda, woke up one morning to find all the bees in his 20 newly constructed beehives had died.
"Fellow beekeepers have also lost plenty of bees to these dangerous pesticides. It looks like we won't get any honey this season," he told AFP.
Ruzigana said many beekeepers, who number more than 100,000 in Rwanda according to officials, were giving up.
"The few bees left are very weak and unproductive... I used to get up to 25 kilogrammes (55 pounds) of honey from one beehive in a month-long season, my family was well taken care of, but all that has collapsed," he said.
Changing climate conditions are part of the problem: longer rains this season were not favourable to beekeeping.
But the main issue is pesticides, say locals and experts.
Bees pollinate crops including coffee, tea, avocados, mangoes, beans and tomatoes -- making them key to an agricultural sector that accounts for 30 percent of GDP and 70 percent of employment in Rwanda.
It is the same across the region. Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya have all reported increasing bee mortality rates due to pesticides, according to the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi.
Rwanda is a poor and landlocked country striving to feed its people through improved maize and rice cultivation, and pesticides help control pests like armyworms.
But many pesticides affect bees' navigation and reproduction, and have been linked to colony collapse disorder, when worker bees abandon a hive.
Rwanda grows large amounts of pyrethrum, a flower that could be used to make a natural pesticide, but exports all its pyrethrum liquid.
Instead, Rwandan farmers use imported synthetic pesticides. A 2022 study by Turkey's Ondokuz Mayis University found that 72 percent used Rocket, containing profenofos, which is highly toxic to bees.
Jeanne Nyirandahimana, part of a women's beekeeping cooperative, said average earnings have fallen from around 250,000 Rwandan francs ($178) per season to around 30,000 ($21).
"It is pesticides like Rocket killing our bees, every day we find many bees dead on roofs and some die in beehives," she said.
An earlier study by the University of Rwanda found that 22 percent of farmers around Lake Kivu used malathion, also deadly to bees.
Despite being banned for use in the EU, malathion is still exported by Denmark, France and Germany -- 12.5 tonnes in 2023, according to the European Chemicals Agency.
Jean Claude Izamuhaye, head of crop production at the Rwanda Agricultural Board, said the body was working on the problem.
"They are our natural pollinators, and it is of critical importance that bees are saved," he said, adding that the board was looking into increasing the use of less harmful "bio-pesticides".
The continued sale of toxic pesticides by EU companies can also mean they end up in the food that is sold back to Europe.
A study released this month by Foodwatch, an advocacy group, found that more than half the food imported into the EU from Rwanda contained traces of "highly hazardous" pesticides that are banned in Europe.
EU countries sold 81,615 tonnes of 41 banned pesticides to other countries for agricultural use in 2022, according to the Pesticide Action Network.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Int'l Business Times
3 hours ago
- Int'l Business Times
Major Climate-GDP Study Under Review After Facing Challenge
A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62 percent by century's end, setting off alarm bells among financial institutions worldwide. But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released Wednesday, challenges that conclusion -- finding the projected hit to be about three times smaller and broadly in line with earlier estimates, after excluding an anomalous result tied to Uzbekistan. The saga may culminate in a rare retraction, with Nature telling AFP it will have "further information to share soon" -- a move that would almost certainly be seized upon by climate-change skeptics. Both the original authors -- who have acknowledged errors -- and the Stanford team hoped the transparency of the review process would bolster, rather than undermine public confidence in science. Climate scientist Maximilian Kotz and co-authors at the renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), published the original research in April 2024, using datasets from 83 countries to assess how changes in temperature and precipitation affect economic growth. It became the second most cited climate paper of the year, according to the UK-based Carbon Brief outlet, and informed policy at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, US federal government and others. AFP was among numerous media outlets to report on it. Yet the eye-popping claim that global GDP would be lowered by 62 percent by the year 2100 under a high emissions scenario soon drew scrutiny. "That's why our eyebrows went up because most people think that 20 percent is a very big number," scientist and economist Solomon Hsiang, one of the researchers behind the re-analysis, also published in Nature, told AFP. When they tried to replicate the results, Hsiang and his Stanford colleagues spotted serious anomalies in the data surrounding Uzbekistan. Specifically, there was a glaring mismatch in the provincial growth figures cited in the Potsdam paper and the national numbers reported for the same periods by the World Bank. "When we dropped Uzbekistan, suddenly everything changed. And we were like, 'whoa, that's not supposed to happen,'" Hsiang said. "We felt like we had to document it in this form because it's been used so widely in policy making." The authors of the 2024 paper acknowledged methodological flaws, including currency exchange issues, and on Wednesday uploaded a corrected version, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. "We're waiting for Nature to announce their further decision on what will happen next," Kotz told AFP. He stressed that while "there can be methodological issues and debate within the scientific community," the bigger picture was unchanged: climate change will have substantial economic impacts in the decades ahead. Frances Moore, an associate professor in environmental economics at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in either the original paper or the re-analysis, agreed. She told AFP the correction did not alter overall policy implications. Projections of an economic slowdown by the year 2100 are "extremely bad" regardless of the Kotz-led study, she said, and "greatly exceed the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to stabilize the climate, many times over." "Future work to identify specific mechanisms by which variation in climate affects economic output over the medium and long-term is critical to both better understand these findings and prepare society to respond to coming climate disruption," she also noted. Asked whether Nature would be retracting the Potsdam paper, Karl Ziemelis, the journal's physical sciences editor, did not answer directly but said an editor's note was added to the paper in November 2024 "as soon as we became aware of an issue" with the data and methodology. "We are in the final stages of this process and will have further information to share soon," he told AFP. The episode comes at a delicate time for climate science, under heavy fire from the US government under President Donald Trump's second term, as misinformation about the impacts of human-driven greenhouse gases abounds. Yet even in this environment, Hsiang argued, the episode showed the robust nature of the scientific method. "One team of scientists checking other scientists' work and finding mistakes, the other team acknowledging it, correcting the record, this is the best version of science." Researchers AFP spoke to said the effects of heat on economies of countries near the tropics is magnified, like the riverbank dwellers carrying banana produce in northern Brazil AFP
Int'l Business Times
a day ago
- Int'l Business Times
NASA Races To Put Nuclear Reactors On Moon And Mars
The United States is rushing to put nuclear power reactors on the Moon and Mars, and hopes to launch the first system by the end of the decade. A new NASA directive -- first reported by Politico and seen by AFP on Tuesday -- calls for the appointment of a nuclear power czar to select two commercial proposals within six months, framing the push as crucial to outpacing a joint Chinese-Russian effort. Signed by acting NASA chief Sean Duffy, who is also US transportation secretary, the July 31 memo is the latest sign of the agency's shift towards prioritizing human space exploration over scientific research under President Donald Trump's second term. "Since March 2024, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid-2030s," it says. "The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first." The idea of using nuclear energy off-planet is not new. Since 2000, NASA has invested $200 million towards developing small, lightweight fission power systems, though none have progressed towards flight readiness, according to the directive. The most recent effort came in 2023 with the completion of three $5 million industry study contracts that focused on generating 40 kilowatts of power, enough to continuously run 30 households for ten years. Unlike solar power, fission systems can operate around the clock -- invaluable during the weeks-long lunar nights or Martian dust storms. Advances in technology have made such systems increasingly compact and lightweight. NASA formally committed to using nuclear power on Mars in December 2024 -- the first of seven key decisions necessary for human exploration of the Red Planet. Based on feedback by industry, surface power needs should be at least 100 kilowatts to support "long-term human operations including in-situ resource utilization," meaning things like life support, communications, and mining equipment to collect surface ice. It assumes the use of a "heavy class lander" that carries up to 15 metric tons of mass, and targets a "readiness to launch by the first quarter of FY30," meaning late 2029. NASA's Artemis program to return to the Moon and establish a lasting presence near the south pole has faced repeated delays. The timeline for Artemis 3, the first planned crewed landing, has slipped to 2027, a date few see as realistic given the planned lander, SpaceX's Starship, is far from ready. China meanwhile is targeting 2030 for its first crewed mission and has proven more adept at meeting its deadlines in recent years.
Int'l Business Times
2 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
Death Of A Delta: Pakistan's Indus Sinks And Shrinks
Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother's grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan's Indus delta. Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities. "The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides," Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, around 15 kilometres (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea. As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring until that too became impossible with only four of the 150 households remaining. "In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area," he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses. Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater. The town's population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data. Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and one swelling with economic migrants, including from the Indus delta. The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta's coastal districts. However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister. The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the impacts of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water. That has led to devastating seawater intrusion. The salinity of the water has risen by around 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations. "The delta is both sinking and shrinking," said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist. Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through disputed Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan. The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80 percent of the country's farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods. The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once ideal for farming, fishing, mangroves and wildlife. But more than 16 percent of fertile land has become unproductive due to encroaching seawater, a government water agency study in 2019 found. In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water's edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground. Boats carry in drinkable water from miles away and villagers cart it home via donkeys. "Who leaves their homeland willingly?" said Haji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level. He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating more families would join him. "A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice," he told AFP. British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects. Earlier this year, several military-led canal projects on the Indus River were halted when farmers in the low-lying riverine areas of Sindh province protested. To combat the degradation of the Indus River Basin, the government and the United Nations launched the 'Living Indus Initiative' in 2021. One intervention focuses on restoring the delta by addressing soil salinity and protecting local agriculture and ecosystems. The Sindh government is currently running its own mangrove restoration project, aiming to revive forests that serve as a natural barrier against saltwater intrusion. Even as mangroves are restored in some parts of the coastline, land grabbing and residential development projects drive clearing in other areas. Neighbouring India meanwhile poses a looming threat to the river and its delta, after revoking a 1960 water treaty with Pakistan which divides control over the Indus basin rivers. It has threatened to never reinstate the treaty and build dams upstream, squeezing the flow of water to Pakistan, which has called it "an act of war". Alongside their homes, the communities have lost a way of life tightly bound up in the delta, said climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum. Women, in particular, who for generations have stitched nets and packed the day's catches, struggle to find work when they migrate to cities, said Majeed, whose grandfather relocated the family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi. "We haven't just lost our land, we've lost our culture." Habibullah Khatti bids a final goodbye to his mother's grave before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan's Indus delta AFP Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater AFP An abandoned house is pictured in one of the villages of Kharo Chan, where the town's population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023 AFP In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water's edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground AFP Even as mangroves are restored in some parts of the coastline, land grabbing and residential development projects drive clearing in other areas AFP Haji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level, rebuilt his new hom farther inland AFP Habibullah Khatti, a local resident, walks over the salt crusts deposited in Kharo Chan town AFP
